A web dashboard linked to coffee chain Bootlegger exposed company and franchise data online, MyBroadband reported.
MyBroadband said it confirmed the leak included names and contact details linked to 132 Bootlegger locations. Some performance and financial data was also exposed, the publication said.
According to MyBroadband, chief executive Ricky Ruthenberg or his team appear to have built the dashboard with Claude. Claude is an AI tool.
The leak was first shared by an anonymous poster on the MyBroadband forums and on Reddit. The poster also explained how the problem was found.
“The dashboard was discovered in a pretty mundane way: current Bootlegger employees were posting photos of their laptop screens on Instagram, the site was visible in those posts, and somebody looked it up,” the poster said.
The poster also said the Bootlegger CEO had posted publicly about using Claude to build his own internal software.
After the web address was spotted, programmers checked the source code of the page, MyBroadband reported.
The app showed a login screen. But it sent a large amount of data along with the login page, MyBroadband said. Anyone with the link could see that data in the page source.
The dashboard was hosted on a service called Railway. MyBroadband said the app was taken down after it sent its questions.
MyBroadband said it contacted Ruthenberg and asked Bootlegger for comment. Neither had responded by the time of publication.
Vibe-coding means using AI models and agents to write software, often without checking or understanding the code.
On 1 July 2026, Ruthenberg wrote on LinkedIn that he had spent six weeks vibe-coding every night. He said he also worked on it over the weekend.
The following Monday, he told the 15 people who report directly to him to use Claude. He said he “put a proper AI adoption plan behind it”.
Ruthenberg said in the post that he was blown away by what his team built in six weeks. He said Bootlegger operations would never be the same.
“Software companies have long tried to own their ecosystem and lock you in, making integrations expensive and almost impossible. AI has completely levelled that playing field,” he wrote.
He also said he was “almost certain” that software itself would soon become free.
Bootlegger was founded in Cape Town in 2012 by Pieter Bloem and brothers De Waal and Antonie Basson. The friends bought a small coffee shop called Go Gos and renamed it Bootlegger.
The chain grew from 18 locations in 2019 to 86 stores in September 2025. It opened its first outlet outside South Africa in Windhoek. It reached 100 stores before the end of 2025.
Its stores are supplied by a micro-roastery that processes 400 tonnes of coffee a year. The company employs 3,500 people.
Source: this article is based on reporting by MyBroadband. Image: MyBroadband. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice Business desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Anelisa Nkuna covers business and money news for Tzaneen Voice. Anelisa reports on the rand, fuel prices, interest rates, jobs, Eskom, Transnet, farming and company results. The aim is simple: explain what the numbers mean for household budgets, small businesses and workers in South Africa.